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Mark Clarke, the so-called Tatler Tory, has been thrown into the centre of a new scandal over claims that the Conservatives broke election spending limits.

Ten police forces are examining the party’s spending on last year’s general election campaign amid allegations that thousands of pounds were wrongly declared, in breach of electoral law.

A leaked email, seen by the Telegraph, shows that Mr Clarke personally wrote to candidates and their teams to advise them how spending on the party’s fleet of campaign battle-buses would be declared to official watchdogs.

In the email, Mr Clarke assures candidates that the Party’s London head office would use national campaign funds to pay for the buses, which ferried armies of activists around the country from one key target seat to another.

However, critics have complained that the buses should have been declared under the individual Tory candidates’ local spending – instead of as part of the separate national campaign budget - because the activists were campaigning in specific target seats.

By law, all election expenses must be properly declared to the Electoral Commission, either as part of parties' national campaigns or as individual candidates' local costs.

Local spending limits vary from seat to seat but are typically about £15,000. A deliberate breach of a candidate's local limit would be a criminal offence and could result in a jail term for MPs who won their seats, triggering a by-election.

In the months since Mr Johnson’s death, a succession of allegations has followed, putting senior Tories under pressure over claims of bullying and sexual misconduct. Separately, the party has admitted failing to declare £38,000 of election hotel costs to the Electoral Commission, after a Channel 4 News investigation. Tory officials denied wrongdoing, blaming an “administrative error”.

In his email to local candidate teams during the 2015 election, Mr Clarke explained how the fleet of buses would be used in the final, intense days of campaigning before last year’s election.

He said his “huge” campaign aimed “to bring large numbers of activists to seats that need them”.

On a typical day 100 activists – 50 on each bus and the same number making their own way – would descend on a key marginal seat and spend the day trying to convert local voters to back the Tories.

Lord Feldman, a close friend of David Cameron’s, Lynton Crosby, the Conservatives’ election strategist, and Stephen Gilbert, the Tory director of campaigns, all “signed off” the bus plan and gave it the “full financial, organisational and practical support of CCHQ (Conservative Campaign Headquarters)”, he said.

He asked local constituency teams to provide lunch and “tea” for up to 100 activists, with a budget of about £700 per day for food.

“When I say tea I do not really mean tea,” he said. “Hot urns are not necessary. We need a light round of sandwiches and some biscuits. For lunch and tea combined we will pay up to £7 in total per person.”

For “legal reasons”, the central party could not use the battle buses to “ferry people around the seat” so the local party must organise any transport that would be needed in the area, he said.

As chief whip, Mr Gove backed the plan and was arranging for MPs and peers to join the activists on campaign days, Mr Clarke said.

A Conservative source said: “There is much disquiet amongst MPs in these marginal seats that their reputations are being unnecessarily damaged and police time wasted when the facts are clear that the Battlebus was instigated, organised and paid for by Central Office as part of the national campaign.”